How I spent time during the X’mas holidays

The 2011 X’mas holiday has been rather wonderful. Spent some lovely time exploring Nairobi with wife and a new set of friends we have here.

Explored

We visited the Nairobi National Park. Saw a few animals – Giraffes, Baboons, Bisons / Wild Bulls, lots of deers. Unfortunately could not see any of the wild cats. I guess the lions decided to take a year end break and disappeared into the jungle. See a collection of my photos.

Giraffe at the Nairobi National Park

Went to Village Market, which had some very nice X’mas lights and a big X’mas tree. Played a round of bowling after so long I can’t remember.

Shopped in the Masai Market which happens on Saturdays at CBD [Opp. Hilton Hotel]. Wife says its much bigger and better bargaining possible. I was happy to pick up a few trinkets for my office cabin.

Feasted

After almost 4 months of it’s opening, I finally got the opportunity to go and have a meal at KFC. My tip: Skip the burger and go for the bucket instead.

Enjoyed a X’mas lunch at Osteria Del Chianti. Once more we relished the wood fire oven pizza and the Ice-cream Sundaes.

Consumed

My favourite two got together and created magic once more. Farhan Akthar and SRK did an awesome job on Don2. I think they are taking Indian films a step higher when it comes to action, special effects and production quality.

Not a very bag fan of Sherlock Holmes, but enjoyed the bit of mystery which the famous detective cracks in his latest – Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

The holidays gave me ample time to complete Season 5 of Entourage. I am half-way into Season 6 now.

A brisk read and I was able to finish Creative Mischief by Dave Trott. Also started reading Steig Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. My blog post for books of 2011 will be online next week.

Configured

Picked up a few lessons and made some Lightroom Pre-sets for 4×6 prints, flickr exports. Installed the LR/Mogrify 2 plugin for Lightroom. Now adding watermarks and that lovely black border to selected photos becomes really easy.

Ensured I did a data backup for both the laptops. A combination of the Time Machine Capsule, Sugarsync[referral link] and Dropbox manage the important files but I also did manual backup of the iPhoto folders.

I have now activated Google Plus. So join me there as I share more of my content – writing & photographs.

This has been a lovely time and now for the first weekend of 2012, I am going to just put up my feet, sip on some beer and think about 2012: Goals, milestones and action plans.